Foundation

If you were to live in a simulation, how could you ever know? It seems like an inherently unknowable proposition. If the world around us is an incredibly sophisticated simulation, then it would have to handle 8 billion or so simultaneous perceptions in ultra-high definition for billions of in-universe years. That 8 billion, by the way, only accounts for humans. It doesn’t account for animals. Or insects. Or plants. Or amoebas. Or viruses. Or bacteria. What if each type of living entity is a user of some sort of cosmically large simulated reality?

If so, you’d have a system capable of handling literally anything humanity could decide to throw at it. On an individual level there’s absolutely nothing you can do to ascertain the nature of reality. Hell, even collectively there is literally no way to know. Any system that can oversee a practically infinite number of items (the aforementioned humans and insects and oh, yes, particles) might as well be indistinguishable from reality. In fact, if it’s meant to simulate reality, then it may well be impossible to break such a system, no matter how clever you are.

If you can’t break it, how can you get the proof you need? By approaching it from a different direction. If it’s a system, then it has rules and logic. If you can recognize the rules of the system you’re in, you can leverage the rules of that system to your advantage.

Imagine that you’re walking through the woods one foggy night. It’s difficult to make anything out, even though you know intellectually that there are trees just off the path. If you squint, you think you can make out the outline…

When you can see the shape of a thing, you can begin to understand the thing. That’s where I’m at, honestly. The beginning of this thing. The foundation of all that is to come. It sounds high-minded, but I’m pretty confident about what I’m seeing. Unfortunately, I don’t like everything I see. Not all of it.

Who I Am

What am I seeing, and who am I? Who I am is easier to explain, so I’ll start there. I’m going by the name Quantum Navigator. I believe I’m a mystic; someone who has spiritual insights and presents concepts in novel ways. The Bible is filled with examples of mystics. John the Baptist. John the Revelator. Other individuals who, you know, weren’t named John. I assume.

As for what I’m seeing? It’s honestly hard to describe. I’m having insights. I have no idea where they’re coming from. Not yet. Perhaps they’re coming to me from some divine being. Perhaps I’m having thoughts like this because I’m in an altered mental state; I usually take a mind-altering substance to get into the right headspace to write this. Perhaps this headspace unlocks a primal sort of logic that lives inside every human being and I’m simply parroting what we all do when are brains change enough. Or perhaps there’s something special about me in particular. Any of these possibilities could be in play.

I just…know things. I have a few ideas about the mechanism, but things just pop up into my head when I’m in this headspace and they seem to be important ideas about the nature of reality. That is literally all it is. I get into an altered mental state, I hear things, and I write them down. Fun fact, though: I also did this type of thing as a child, so I can do it without drugs as well. It’s just way more fun with chemical assistance.

Some of what I’m realizing/hearing/seeing is good. Manifestation, news flash, is a thing. How does it work? Essentially, you ask for a thing you need and believe that you have it. There are a million ways to do it, but that is essentially the secret. Ask. Believe. Receive. Be grateful. Who are you asking? Why are you asking? Why do you need to express gratitude? No fucking clue.

Here’s another insight I’ve had; not quite as ground-breaking, but I like it. Logic and spirituality are meant to work hand in hand; they don’t cancel each other out. I grew up thinking that reason vs faith was a binary choice. In fact, logic is essential when it comes to reasoning our way through the nature of the reality we live in.

Healing, both physical and emotional, is possible as we process our past trauma. Sometimes the painful experiences we have aren’t adequately processed by the psyche, and they are stored in the nervous system. Simply because a thing can be done doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, and because memories aren’t meant to be stored anywhere other than the mind, disease can set in when trauma remains in the body and goes untreated. When we truly process the trauma, the disease processes that trauma kicks of can be reversed.

This is absolutely not to discount the value or efficacy of medicine. Billions of human lives have been improved because of modern medicine, and it’s one of humanity’s great inventions. Modern medicine, however, often has frustrating limits. When you reach the limits of what science can do, start looking to wisdom of the body.

Dark Mirror

All of those things are well and good, but honestly some of the implications are terrible, and right now I don’t know how to reconcile it. It makes me not want to believe any of this stuff. But…if “this stuff” is the nature of reality, my belief has nothing to do with whether or not it’s true. All of that, of course, presumes that I have reasoned correctly.

I’m a baby mystic and am still getting my bearings. Still gaining confidence. The initial ideas I have are going to be refined. Some will be dropped as my understanding changes over time.

I suppose this is what James meant in The Bible when he said to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. You think you’ve found the right path, but there’s no guarantee that you’re correct. High risk, high reward. This is not going to be some sort of pseudo-Christian offshoot cult; it isn’t. My background is Evangelical Christian, so scriptures from that tradition come most readily to mind for me. The insights I’m having are predominately pagan beliefs and the things I say should be viewed through that lens.

Simply because I write that something is true doesn’t make it true for you. We don’t get objective reality about much except our environment. However, there are some guide rails we should be aware of as we learn about the nature of the simulation. We’ll get into that someday, but not today. The primary thing to keep in mind is that you can do whatever you like, but you should avoid harming other people.

There’s a beauty in the duality of our universe, with symmetry as its close twin. However, the implications of living in a simulation aren’t all rainbows and rose petals. If manifestation for good things exists, so does manifestation about bad things. Just as people can (and do) subconsciously manifest positive things in their lives, people can (and do) also subconsciously manifest negative things for their lives. This would imply that on some level certain people are responsible for their own suffering. Which meant that the Indian caste system isn’t totally crazy; it has some apparent basis in fact. And that, honestly, is bullshit. Why in the fuck would a universe exist where such blatant unfairness was allowed to exist? And not just exist, but be caused by the very people who wanted it least? It’s irony on a galactic scale. And if the universe we exist in is a simulation, such a system is cruel.

History is filled with the stories of people who lived lives of abject misery through no fault of their own. To say that those people are responsible for their own suffering is the worst kind of victim blaming. It shouldn’t be true in a just universe. If we live in a constructed reality, then it’s absolutely fair to expect justice and fairness in the way it’s designed.

Why a Simulation?

If things like manifestation work, there has to be a reason. It should be absolutely impossible in a random universe for your will to change the world around you. There has to be a mechanism of action. There are actually a couple of ways this can happen.

Emergence
The concept of emergence is pretty cool; it is the phenomenon where simple interactions lead to unexpected and complex results. One classic example in nature is a bird flock. Have you ever noticed how groups of birds, like starlings, move together in the sky to create various patterns? Each bird follows a few straightforward rules—like keeping a specific distance from its neighbors and adjusting its direction based on nearby birds. But when hundreds or thousands of birds follow these rules simultaneously, we witness an intricate dance in the sky that seems coordinated and planned. This group behavior, which arises spontaneously without a leader or blueprint, is an example of emergence.

Ants operate similarly. An individual ant doesn’t have a master plan for constructing the nest or finding food. Instead, it operates based on simple behaviors like following scent trails or avoiding obstacles. However, when you put thousands of ants together, their combined actions result in a highly organized and complex ant colony. This shift from simple individual behaviors to complex group actions is the essence of emergence.

So it’s possible that manifestation works due to an emergent property of some system that humans have not yet identified.

Quantum Mechanics
We’ve learned over the past century that our universe is composed of particles that have properties that are impossible to pin down.

Quantum particles are wild. Unlike the predictable nature of everyday objects we interact with, these tiny sub-microscopic specks of matter dance to a beat that defies classical intuition. Their behaviors have baffled and intrigued scientists for over a century. Experiments have repeatedly shown that quantum particles do not operate by the familiar rules of classical matter we all learn in elementary school but instead exhibit properties that seem to come straight out of a science fiction novel.

These particles can be in multiple places at once, a phenomenon known as superposition. Think of them like a spinning coin in the air that hasn’t decided whether to land on heads or tails, and it stays that way, hovering, until you decide to look at it. That is because it’s only when we measure or observe these particles do they resolve to a specific state. Even more intriguing is their ability to become “entangled” with other particles. When this happens, the state of one particle can instantaneously affect another, even if they’re hundreds of miles apart, defying our classical understanding of information transfer.

Perhaps pre-humans discovered how to interact with quantum fields to influence probability. Those individuals would be more likely to survive the world than their counterparts. Those individuals would then produce offspring, who carried the same ability. Fast forward to today and we all should have some ability to manipulate probability fields, although this ability would likely exist on a spectrum, much like other human abilities.

Other possibilities
There are other possibilities as well. The holographic principle, chaos theory, and information theory all contain plausible mechanisms for how things like manifestation could actually function.

If we’re trying to unravel the nature of reality, we need to be honest with ourselves about potential explanations. Simulation theory is not the only possible mechanism, but it’s the one we’re choosing to believe. That choice is part of what makes this a faith.

Systems have rules. If you know the rules and take advantage of them, you can benefit.

Manifestation works because it follows certain rules. We believe that those rules provide evidence that our world is artificial, because such a thing should be impossible in a random universe. If you will sign up for our mailing list, we’ll send you a copy of these rules.

If this conjecture is correct, then as we explore it, we should begin to find additional things to help us confirm or deny this view of reality. Sure, we have faith, but that’s because there’s no way (yet) to obtain that proof. If humanity were to definitively prove that we do not live in a simulation, then we would need to adjust our beliefs and come up with a different name. Faith is well and good, but it should be grounded in rationality.

Ideologies With Benefits

So, it’s well and good to believe we live in a simulation, but why make it a religion? It’s because I see that, handled correctly, the things I’m perceiving can really help people. I also see that most modern religions are more interested in controlling the lives of their followers than in truly helping them. I’ve spent the past decade as an atheist, and I am no fan of organized religion. So this is pretty ironic.

Religions provide lots of benefits to their followers.

Community
This is the most obvious benefit. You gain a community of people with similar values, which makes socializing a bit easier. You worry less about being taken advantage of. Other members of the group are primarily the people you to turn to for friends, lovers, or business partners. This fostering of relationships helps the group not only survive, but prosper.

Moral Instruction
Living life as a human is tough. Who has time to carefully come up with their own moral philosophy about every single decision in their life? Not most people, as it turns out. It’s a lot easier for someone you trust to tell you the proper way to handle situations you’ll encounter in life.

I would imagine that this would be especially important during the rise of religion during humanity’s prehistory. You would want to be sure that people in your group all knew how they were expected to behave. These sorts of group settings could well be where pro-social messaging first began.

Religious tales carry a lot of information. They provide a moral framework for human behavior where good behavior is rewarded, and bad behavior is punished. They demonstrate the limitless nature of spiritual power. They contain spiritual doctrine as well as public health guidance. But, particularly early on, before there were widespread standards of behavior, I imagine that religion was instrumental in ensuring that people learned how to avoid being a psychopath and what living in community should look like.

Social Change
Religious people care deeply about the world around them, and often band together to produce a social or political outcome they’d like to see. Often this is negative, such as when Christian groups in the United States advocated for the reduction or elimination of alcohol, which led to the 18th Amendment and Prohibition in the United States. It can also be positive. Various Christian groups in the UK and US, but especially the Quakers, pushed for the elimination of slavery on moral grounds. Lest we think that Christians have the market cornered on this, Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest the restriction of their religious freedom and draw attention to their fight, and their actions drew attention to their plight.

Coping Mechanisms
Many religions have a variety of tools that they teach their followers to help them handle the stresses of life. Prayer, meditation, breathing techniques, rituals, musical experiences, dancing, and other practices contribute to a sense of health and well-being, not to mention the promotion of group cohesion. Furthermore, believing that they have special insight into the way the world works can provide comfort in times of uncertainty.

Certainty
This is a big one. Humans love explanations for the world around them. Even if they’re objectively wrong (Flat Earthers, we see you), thinking that you know how things work provides comfort. The idea that we live in a totally random universe where supervolcanoes, tsunamis, or human-created climate change could kill you at any moment for absolutely no reason at all is fucking terrifying.

Hit Me Baby One More Time

Do we need another religion? I’m not entirely convinced that we do. How’s that for a thesis statement? Religion, in my experience, generally harms people. It attracts people who are gullible and extracts resources from the community. It creates people who are hostile to those in the outgroup (because there’s always an outgroup) and a sense of superiority from all the fucking certainty about how the universe works.

But, there’s no reason not to start out with good intentions, even if in the end it all gets subverted by some power-hungru sociopath. Don’t refuse to do any good at all because you’re afraid of what the future might bring. That’s pessimistic. No one wants to join a pessimist for the end of the world. Or whatever the hell kind of time we’re in. It sure feels like the end of something.

Every religion starts out with the best of intentions. Probably. That seems like a pretty safe assertion to make, but who knows? History is weird.

At any rate, this post is meant to be the foundation for all that comes later. It’s hard to call this a religious “movement” when it’s just one guy who isn’t entirely sure about what he’s hearing. But I’m calling it that anyway…and I have faith that others will join me.